A collection of automotive stuff, restaurant/travel-related items and personal observations; mostly a lot of claptrap, really.

Nashville

Taken a few years ago at some joint on Broadway in Nashville, this was one of several photos with good-looking girls I had never laid eyes on before. It wasn't my birthday, but the Nissan crew was telling every attractive female we encountered that it was. Here's to getting older!

Thursday, October 22, 2015

I'm not the kind of guy to hold a
grudge. Well, not usually. There is that kid who sucker punched me in
second grade over some sort of playground teeter-totter dispute. If I
ever run into her again, she'll get a stern talking to. But,
generally, I try to look ahead and not into the rearview mirror. So
when, after years of not being invited to Honda media-launch events,
Honda did include me in its recent media first-drive of the Civic in
the Los Angeles area, I jumped at the opportunity.

Of course, the decision to accept was
made easier because Honda headquartered the event in Westlake Village
where I had been in July with Mazda. On that junket, my driving
partner and I located several nearby craft breweries, as well as
Wade's Wines – one of the best liquor/wine stores I have visited.
Since my Mazda-sponsored trip, a Greenville friend had turned me on
to a hard-to-get spirit distilled in the Los Angeles area called Slow
Hand Six Woods Whiskey. I figured if any liquor store would stock it,
it would be Wade's Wines. Not to mention this is the same store where
I scored two 22-oz. bottles of Belching Beaver Peanut Butter Milk
Stout that I carted home in my luggage the last time around.

Honda put us up at the Westlake Village
Inn on Agoura Rd. It's an upscale joint with a spa, golf course and
lake. A gorgeous property with spacious, nicely furnished guest
rooms, West Lake Village Inn is just a mile or so distant down Agoura
Rd. from the aforementioned Wade's Wines. I arrived in my room in
plenty of time to grab my camera and embark on a little hike to
Wade's before getting ready for dinner. After sitting on a plane for
several hours, I needed the exercise.

Arriving at Wade's, I scoured the
shelves of bourbons and whiskeys in a futile search for Six Woods.
Eventually one of Wade's helpful experts came to my rescue.
Unfamiliar himself with this hard-to-get elixir, he looked it up on
the store's computerized inventory. Deciding two bottles were hidden
away somewhere among the displays, we played “where's Waldo” for
another five minutes before he returned to the computer. This time,
he went to a search engine, typed in the whiskey's name and found
images for the labels. With a knowledge of the label design, finding
the elusive bottles required less than a minute. Deciding that I
wanted one bottle, I called my Greenville buddy to see if he wanted
the other. Why, yes, yes he did.

Wandering back into the beer section, I
found a few 22-oz. bottles of my beloved peanut butter stout of which
I captured two. Now I was in a quandary. I had enough bubble wrap and
space in my suitcase for two bottles of something, but not four. My
helpful Wade's counter person to the rescue. He suggested I buy a
three-bottle shipping container and put it on the plane as checked
luggage. Problem solved. Now all I had to do was lug the packed
shipping container and remaining bottle of beer back to the hotel. I
considered calling Uber; however, Wade's is not on the street proper,
but actually about a city block off of it. I had no confidence the
Uber driver would find it. So, I hoofed it back, struggling with my
load of goodies. Checking the shipping container as luggage was a
fine idea; everything arrived home in mint condition.

I arrived back at the hotel in plenty
of time to quaff a couple of beers with some of my buddies who had
driven that day and were waiting for their shuttles to the airport.
This was one of those one-and-done, arrive-one-day-and-leave-the-next
trips. I'm not usually keen on such overnighters – particularly
when in Calif. – but it was what it was. Either I was going or I
wasn't. Full disclosure: Honda provided an option in my time zone,
but I went with Calif. Mea culpa.

Dinner that evening was at the hotel.
It was casual and the food was pretty good. After breakfast the next
morning, we media types were given a 90-minute tutorial on the
redesigned Civic. Honda knows a little about building and selling
Civics. More than 10 million Civics have left U.S. showrooms with
more than 35 million sold worldwide. Seven million of the 10
million-plus Civics sold in the U.S. were built in the the U.S.

Four decades of Civic.

The original Civic sold here was a 1973
model with the second generation following in 1980. The 2016 will be
the 10th generation. To say its exterior lines are
stunning doesn't do it justice. This sedan, designed in Calif., is
drop-dead gorgeous. But, it's not just a pretty face. Honda is
calling it the most ambitious Civic remake in its history. Rather
than benchmarking other cars in Civic's segment, planners and
engineers targeted European performance sedans. In areas of
acceleration, fuel economy, handling, noise and vibration and safety,
among others, Civic stalks the best Europe has to offer.

Two new powertrains provide the go. LX
and EX grades get the 158-horsepower 2-liter four-cylinder engine;
while the upper three grades – EX-T, EX-L and Touring – get a
tasty174-horsepower 1.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder. A CVT
hustles engine output to the front wheels of all but the $18,640
entry-level LX 2.0L version, which uses a six-speed manual.
Remarkably both engines deliver 35 mpg in combined city/highway
driving, except with the manual tranny which drops that number to 31
mpg.

Its most tricked-out Touring trim
starts at $26,500. Honda doesn't really offer options. To gain
content, you move up to the next grade. So, $26,500 is about as much
as you can spend. Our turbo was not only fun to drive, but it was
quiet and smooth as silk.

Offering scads of elbow room, the cabin
is spacious and its premium materials provide the illusion of a much
more expensive four-door. And, its trunk has as much cargo room as a
Jaguar XJ sedan. Every Civic comes with such features as remote
engine start, dual-zone automatic climate control and rain sensing
wipers. Honda Sensing is corporate speak for its suite of safety
technologies such as forward collision warning, lane departure
warning and lane keeping assist, and road departure mitigation. It is
available on even the entry-level LX grade. No question, in the
Civic, Honda has raised the bar in the compact-sedan segment.

This is what a Pinewood Derby loser looks like.

Our drive route took us to Malibu
Wine's Saddlerock Ranch where we lunched from several food trucks.
Not only could we drive the new Civic on a route near the lunch, but
some competitive models were also available. Otherwise, we amused
ourselves building and racing some Pinewood Derby cars as well as
playing some other games. If you are curious, my Derby entry was a
real dog. Moral: Never compete in a Pinewood Derby against auto
engineers determined not to lose.

I certainly can eat and drink $29 worth of free stuff in seven hours; I've seen me do it!

My red-eye flight home wasn't until
around 11:30. Honda shuttled me to LAX at 4:30. Wow; seven hours to
burn! I wandered into Delta's Sky Club to inquire about the number of
Sky Miles needed to buy a day pass. I was shocked to learn Delta
doesn't accept miles for day passes. No way was I going to pony up
$50 to buy one. I can eat and drink a lot of free stuff in seven
hours, but not $50 worth. Then the Sky Club desk agent said the magic
words, “American Express.” Turns out my Delta AmEx card was good
for a $21 discount. Now, $29 is a number I can work with.

Sixteen hours after Honda dropped me
off at LAX, I landed home in Greenville, SC, reminded of why I'm not
a fan of one-night car events in Calif.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

I am king of all I survey from my lofty perch atop this, the Hope Diamond of commodes.

I'm not the kind of guy who gets all
giddy over something as mundane as a new commode; but when replacing
the old one requires as much effort as my recent encounter with the
guest-bathroom toilet did, I think I was entitled to a certain sense
of achievement as I settled onto it with a sigh for its maiden
cruise.

The silly thing had been running for
two weeks and I was weary of listening to it as I worked at my desk.
When at my PC, I look directly into the guest bath when I turn my
head to the left. I had been busy and just didn't feel like dealing
with it. Besides, my master bath upstairs was (and remains) in
complete disarray because I have an unfinished remodeling project
ongoing in that section of the house. While that's been underway,
I've been sleeping in the guestroom, and utilizing the guest bathroom for
showers and personal-biological imperatives. The potty in question
was a squat, round thing that I had wanted to replace since buying
the house. Rather than just replace the guts in the tank, I decided
this was the time to switch out the whole Magilla. Silly me.

No, replacing the old commode didn't
measure up to curing cancer or surviving a climb to Mt. Everest's
summit and back, but changing it out wasn't nearly the walk in the
park the DIY videos on YouTube portrayed it to be. Not even close.
Not even in the same ballpark. Not even on the same planet.

At the heart of the matter is the same
issue as with nearly every repair or home-improvement project I
tackle: This house is over 60 years old. Even if lurking around every
DIY corner wasn't some half-assed, jerry-rigged, messed-up bit of
amateur workmanship that must be dealt with, home building six
decades ago was much different than now. The cement board/plaster
walls, 60-year-old wiring and one-step-up-from-outhouse plumbing all
conspire to add hours and extra expense to even the simplest of
chores.

I went to Home Depot (the first trip
for this project) and found a perfectly acceptable chair-height,
elongated crapper for $98! I was ecstatic. This isn't going to cost
much at all, I thought to myself as I wallowed in my ignorance. I was
driving a Fiat 500X that week, which has a cargo area roomy enough to
cart home my new acquisition still in its carton. Manhandling it up
into the cargo hold was a chore, but doable. Arriving home, I left it
in the car and headed in to begin taking out the old throne.

From the get-go, I am not keen on any
task requiring me to enter the dark, mysterious confines of my home's
crawl space. But, I was forced to when I couldn't complete every DIY
toilet-replacement video's Step No. 1: Closing the shut-off valve
controlling water flow into the toilet tank. The knob
would turn, but nothing happened. Under the house I went to stop the
water flow at its source.

As these nasty areas go, mine is sort
of the Taj Mahal of crawl spaces. The floor is covered stem to stern
with a thick layer of visqueen. It seems both water and critter
tight. I can bend a little at the waist and maneuver around freely.
The main water-line shut-off valve is just to the right of the
crawl-space entrance, which is located inside my house. So, it's not
quite as nasty as I make it out to be, but it's still a pain to climb
down in there.Not to mention that I think I can sense little beady eyes looking at me.

With the main water supply into the
house turned off, I went about emptying all the water from the tank
and disconnected the water line. Removing the tank from the seat, I
started to think the worst was over. I decided to head to Home Depot
and purchase a new shut-off valve. HD trip No. 2. Oh, but first I
needed to wrestle the carton with the new toilet out of the car and
onto my carport.

Back home, I was ready to move forward.
Now all I had to do was free the nuts holding the bowl to the floor
via a bolt on each side of it. At least that's what the DIY videos
showed. Yeah, not so much. This bowl wasn't attached to the floor by
bolts sticking up, but had been secured by sinking screws into the
floor. What? The screw on the left side broke free easily; however
the one on the right was frozen solid. After 10-or-so minutes of
trying to break it lose, I hiked out to my shed and got a small
sledgehammer. I broke the bowl base into pieces and then removed the
screw. I then hefted the bowl off the drain.

If you've never replaced a potty, you
might be surprised to learn that once you pull the bowl lose from the
floor, you are left with a big, waxy mess. A time-honored way to keep
sewer gasses from escaping into the air is by inserting a wax donut
that's roughly 2-inches thick between the bowl and the drain pipe.
It's sticky and just plain nasty. All of that muck must be cleaned up
before moving on to the next step of the installation.

At this point in a normal installation,
I would have been home free. According to the DIY videos, all I
needed to do was insert a new wax ring around the drain, push the
bowl down on top of it, put the nuts on the bolts on either side of
the bowl and connect the tank. I had now been messing with this for
about three hours and had yet to remove the new toilet from its
carton. But I thought I might be on the home stretch. Boy, do I crack
myself up.

But wait, there weren't any bolts to
slide the bowl over and tighten it to the floor. Around the rim of
the drain, there should be a flange to which those bolts are
attached, and that flange was missing. It had been cut off and
removed. Whoever installed this toilet simply put the wax donut on
the floor, pushed the bowl down on top of it and screwed the bowl to
the floor. I could have saved myself some money and a lot of time had
I just done the same thing. But, hey, this is my house and I wanted a
cleaner job. Back to YouTube to find a video with ideas of how to
handle things if the flange is gone.

The shiny new replacement flange in place, but not secured to the floor.

It turns out that a broken or missing
flange isn't an uncommon problem. They make replacement flanges with
those upright bolts that fit down into the drainpipe and can be
screwed to the floor. Trip No. 3 to HD in search of a replacement
flange. Home Depot had one that looked as though it would work. So
far, in addition to the cost of the toilet, I had spent nearly $20 on
the new shut-off valve and 12-inch connection hose and another $20 on
the replacement flange. My time invested in this project was fast
approaching four hours and the new commode was still in the box.

Returning home with my purchases, I
looked at the clock and realized it was 6:30. The main water line was
still off, I needed to install the new shut-off valve, get a shower
and get something going for dinner. Getting a water-tight seal where
the shut-off valve connected to the water line required two or three
tries and a couple of return trips to the crawl space turning the
water on and off. Finally around 7:00, I was ready to call it a day.
But wait, the new toilet was still sitting on the carport in its box.
Nuts. I had to open the box and remove the tank to make it light
enough that I could wrestle the box up the steps and into the house.

A trip to Calif. with Honda and a
couple of assignment deadlines prevented me from returning to this
project for a week, during which I navigated around the commode
carton in the middle of my dining area. It did give the cat something
different to sleep on; so, at least she was happy.

Returning to this task, the first thing
to do was to secure the replacement flange to the floor. In this
bathroom the floor consists of small mosaic tiles over a concrete
slab. Sinking screws into the floor would require a drill bit
engineered specifically for tile. Trip No. 4 to HD. I found a pack of
tile bits in four sizes for $10. I mounted the appropriate one in my
drill and proceeded to drill the first of four holes. There was a lot
of racket, a little dust and even less of a hole. The bit was
completely burned away and I had little more than a dimple in the
tile. Okay, plan B would be using a hammer and chisel to chip away
all of the tile where the screws would go. I drew the outline of the
flange on the tile with a Sharpie and started chipping away.

An hour later, the flange rested on the
tile, but the screw holes were suspended over bare concrete. Now I
needed a concrete drill bit and concrete screws. Trip No. 5 to HD.

Drilling the holes and sinking the
concrete screws went fairly smoothly. The flange was squared up to
the the back wall and secure. But there were some fairly wide
spaces between the flange and the tile in places. I didn't want to
get the new throne installed only to discover some sewer gas was
leaking out. Trip No. 6 to HD was to buy some $5 foam sealant like
you put around doors and windows. You spray it in and it expands
creating an airtight and watertight seal. I applied it, wiped away
the excess and let it cure for 24 hours.

While buying the sealant, I also spent
$9 for a cleaner solution to the wax donut. I think there is still
wax involved, but it's contained in a rubber skin. Fitting over the
two bolts the bowl attaches to, it slides down into and over the
flange.

Finally, after seven or eight total
hours of labor, it was time to remove the new toilet from its box.
Excitement was running high at Casa de Heaps. I slapped the bowl down
over the bolts and worked it around a bit to flatten the rubber/wax
donut. Tightening the wing nuts over the bolts, I realized the bowl
wasn't flush with floor. It was a little uneven, rocking back and
forth a bit. Trip No. 7 to HD was to buy some shims to level things
out. Eventually the bowl was secure to the floor. A quick check with
the level assured that I would list neither to starboard nor port
when in a seated position. Dumping a couple of buckets of water into
the bowl, I was pleased to see there were no leaks.

I fitted the tank to the bowl and bolted it on. Now it
was just a matter of attaching the line running from the shut-off
valve to the tank. Dammit. Too short. The instructions called for a
12-inch line, but that didn't account for the extra inch this toilet
sits away from the wall. The typical distance is 13 inches; here it's
14 inches. Trip No. 8 to HD was to exchange the hose for a longer one
and to buy some caulk to seal the space where the bowl joined the
floor.

Ready to go, I pressed the flush
button. I swear I could angels singing.

Hours of work, roughly $60 in
installation parts and more cussing than I've done since erecting my
shed, but it was worth it. It's my home's showplace.

My 4-1-1

I began covering the automotive industry in 1986, when I parlayed my position as a retail sales rep into helping conceptualize and establish a stand-alone automotive section for the Boca Raton News a Knight-Ridder newspaper in South Florida. In 1995 I moved to the Palm Beach Post to help develop its bi-weekly automotive pages. Leaving there in 2000, I freelanced car reviews to a variety of publications before assuming a senior editor position at AMI Autoworld magazine in 2001. While at AMI I helped launch NOPI Street Performance Compact magazine and was appointed its managing editor. I have been freelancing since leaving AMI in 2004. My regular outlets have included Hispanic Magazine, the Miami Herald, the Washington Times, the Journal-Register Newspapers, AAA Go magazine, MyCarData.com, Automotive Metrics, AutoTrader, Bankrate.com and Interest.com.

In addition to freelancing automotive reviews, from 1991 until 2001 I was supervising producer of the syndicated television series Discover America.